The present invention relates to winding machines and in particular to apparatus for winding into a cassette a length of information material, such as a magnetic tape, film strip, or the like, with opposed ends of this length of material connected with leads which in turn are connected with rotary hubs of the cassette.
While apparatus of the above general type is known, the known apparatus suffers from several drawbacks. Thus, the known apparatus does not have the possibility of full automation. For example, in the known apparatus the initially continuous leader which is connected at its ends to the rotary cassette hubs must be manually withdrawn from the cassette and placed in engagement with a structure where splicing operations go forward. In addition, the known apparatus of the above general type is extremely complex and expensive while also being incapable of operating at high speed, so that because of this lack of high speed operating capability and necessity of certain manual operations the output of the known apparatus is relatively small and the cost involved in providing cassettes with information material stored therein is undesirably great.
In order to withdraw the initially continuous leader from the front opening of the cassette case, then to cut the continuous leader into separate leaders and then to splice the information material at its opposed ends to the separate leaders, by way of a suitable splicing material such as adhesive tape, for example, it is necessary with the known apparatus to withdraw the continuous leader manually while giving the leader a twisted or reversed position so that the information material and leaders will then be capable of being properly wound into the cassette. Operations of this type required by the prior art represent bottlenecks with respect to the achievement of full automation of the winding apparatus. Even if it were possible to provide full automation for such apparatus, the apparatus when following the teachings of the prior art would be extremely complex, providing a serious obstacle to high-speed automatic winding of information material into the cassette.
A further drawback of the known structures resides in the fact that the information-carrying side of the information material easily becomes damaged. Thus, during splicing operations the information material and the leaders are conventionally held by suction against a holding structure. Thus, in the case of magnetic tape capable of carrying sound-producing signals the side of the tape which carries these signals is in engagement with the holding structure while the opposite side receives the splicing tape. The same is true of film strips where the emulsion side which has been exposed engages the holding structure while the opposite non-emulsion side receives the splicing material. The holding structure conventionally includes metallic plates or strips which are formed with openings passing therethrough so that by way of suction applied to such plates or strips the information material and the leaders can be held in engagement with the holding structure while the splicing operations go forward. Because the suction acts only through these separate openings which are spaced from each other, the information material cannot be uniformly held against the holding structure. The force at the openings themselves is quite large while between the openings there is practically no holding force, so that a non-uniform holding action is provided with possible fluttering and undesirable vibratory movement of the material occurring, and at the same time when the material is moved along such holding strips or plates the information-carrying side of the material can easily be damaged to distort the information which is stored in and extracted from the information material.
A further drawback of the prior art apparatus resides in the fact that the various components thereof are undesirably spread apart from each other so that a large space is required by the prior art structures, whereas relatively compact assemblies are much more desirable.